|
 It’s
pretty interesting that the two best metal releases of the year, so far,
have been from Celtic Frost and
Sodom, both
creaky holdouts from the very early days of extreme metal. And whilst this
distinction would probably have served them both better in, say, 1985,
it’s a real victory yelp for aging ‘bangers like myself. See, Mr.
Dreadlocks? Your grandpa in the studded denim vest was right all along!
Sodom’s
latest offering to the metal gods is their strongest in years, a
blistering thrashfest with jawdropping guitar wizardry from Bernemann
and…Christ, actual songs! With choruses and everything. And then, of
course, there’s Tom Angelripper. Two dozen years later and his bass
still sounds like some sort of animal slowly dying from bellyrot under a
blazing sun, and his tortured deathrattle of a voice is still one of the
most distinctive – and fearsome – sounds in all of metaldom. He even gets
a little fancy on this one. On the corrosive “Lay Down the Law”,
Angelripper does that same pseudo-rap thing that Axl did on “You Could Be
Mine”, only he sounds much less like a starving alley cat than ol’ Bill
did. Mostly, though, he just barks out his apocalyptic orders like some
kinda generalissimo in the Endtime army. And that’s exactly how we like
him. DTO is a non-stop barrage of machine guns and hand
grenades and endless war and the hardest, heaviest metal imaginable. Fuck
yes. Get it or get lost, poser. ________________________________________________________ |